


exercise in futility

by ilfirin_estel



Category: Being Human (US/Canada)
Genre: 1.04, Angst, Blood Addiction, Episode Related, F/M, Introspective Angst, References to UK version, Season 1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-30
Updated: 2013-05-30
Packaged: 2017-12-13 11:38:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/823873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilfirin_estel/pseuds/ilfirin_estel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This feeling, this knife-edge between control and the lack of it—it’s familiar. So familiar that he’s torn between ripping himself wide-open to embrace the whirlwind and fleeing into the smallest, darkest corner of the city so he can hide.</p>
            </blockquote>





	exercise in futility

**Author's Note:**

> If I forget any warnings, please let me know.

Here’s the thing—he loves it. He really fucking _loves_ it. He’s a shark, even if he hates admitting it. He spent centuriesembracing that side of him, that wild animal addiction, the sensation, the power, the freedom that comes with losing your conscience—and it’s not the first time he’s tried to stop, not the first time he’s fallen off the wagon. It’s a cycle with him, crawling toward the hope of normality and the shreds of his long-neglected humanity, then free-falling off the cliff into madness and destruction.  
   
He hacked his way through the world, leaving his soul permanently blood-stained. So this feeling, this knife-edge between control and the lack of it—it’s familiar. So familiar that he’s torn between ripping himself wide-open to embrace the whirlwind and fleeing into the smallest, darkest corner of the city so he can hide. Hide from temptation, hide from himself.  
   
He tries to tell Rebecca that some days are better than others, but the words taste like lies. She’s on her knees before him, licking his palm and begging.  _Please, Aidan,_ _I need it, I_ need _it_ … It’s his fault she’s here, his fault she’s a slave like he is. So he tugs his sleeve up, bares the veins, lets her sink into him.  
   
And he—he remembers what that’s like, drinking vampire blood, sucking down the blood that made you. It’s ice-cold, but it’s still a high. A high almost as good as murder. Rebecca slams him up against a wall, and he groans in pleasure rather than pain, opening up to her.   
   
He thinks about Bishop, all the times Bishop gave him this, all the times he gave Bishop this, all the years they were mates, maker and made. Look where they are now. Look where he is now.  
   
He bites into Rebecca’s throat and her breath sharpens up into a high split-second whine that he loves so he swallows and takes her down into him, drowns in her. They shred their clothes and skin; they fuck and feed and fall down together.  
   
He’s a disease. He’s a plague. He infected her and now he has to live with it.  
   
 _We can save each other,_ she says. He says. Doesn’t matter—he almost believes it. Almost believes that he can save her and that if he does that, there’s still hope for him. They can break the cycle, break free of it and get clean.  
   
He just wants to be clean again. He invites her to dinner, calls it nostalgia. They sit in front of empty plates. He studies his reflection in the silver of the knife, but that doesn’t stop him from hearing the incessant pounding, pounding, pounding of all the living hearts in the room. Rebecca shivers next to him; he looks up, tries to fake a conversation.  
   
It’s an exercise in futility.  
   
Black-out eyes and sharp teeth and pleasure mixing with pain. Ice-cold blood and the high that never lasts as long as they want it to. He’s powerless in the face of the addiction, riding on the false power it gives him. The only consolation—and it’s small, so small—is that he’s better than Rebecca. He has the tiniest sliver of superior control. It’s what he clings to as he hauls her away from the poor human bastard they’re two seconds away from slaughtering.  
   
 _Run_ , he snarls. Run. We’re the horrible creatures your mother warned you about. And we’re trying to be better than what we are, but it’s a harder struggle than anything you will ever have to feel. I am God’s rage, His cruelty and indifference, and I would kill you where you stand if I were not swallowing down shame and guilt like the ghosts of blood and ash.  _Run_.  
   
Futile.  
   
He finds himself in the hotel bathroom, faucet on to cover up the gasping, choking noises ripping from his throat. He buries his face in his hands, tasting salt from his tears; relief wars with perverse disappointment that the salt isn’t mixed with the copper tang of warm, living blood. Rebecca’s voice reaches through the walls and the door— _I can’t do this, it hurts too much_ —and he knows, he knows, it never gets any fucking easier, it’s exhausting, and it would be so easy to just embrace the beast inside him and butcher the entire world without a care.   
   
But they can save each other. She said that. He said that. He believes it. He has to. Because if he can save her than there’s still hope left for him.  
   
 _I’ll be strong enough for both of us,_ he tells her, but when he steps out of the bathroom, she is already gone.   
   
He says it anyway, for himself if no one else.  
   
 _When you wake up in the morning, you’ll feel… better._  



End file.
